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Unreal Engine Game Development Cookbook

By : John P. Doran
Book Image

Unreal Engine Game Development Cookbook

By: John P. Doran

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Unreal Engine Game Development Cookbook
John P. Doran
Oct, 2015 | 326 pages
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Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Unreal Engine Game Development Cookbook
Unreal Engine Game Development Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Getting Acquainted with the UE4 Interface
Getting Acquainted with the UE4 Interface
Introduction
Installing UE4 and folder structure
UI overview
Navigating the viewport
The Content Browser overview
Importing your own content
2
Level Design – Building Out Levels or Greyboxing
Level Design – Building Out Levels or Greyboxing
Introduction
Building a room
Building out a level
Applying materials to geometry brushes
Converting brushes to static meshes or volumes
3
Creating Quality Interior Environments
Creating Quality Interior Environments
Introduction
Placing static meshes
Placing a particle system
Using Groups
Meshing an example map
Adding life to static meshes
4
Building the Great Outdoors – Exterior Environments
Building the Great Outdoors – Exterior Environments
Introduction
Creating a landscape
Building an exterior level using the Sculpt mode
Creating rivers with the Flatten tool
Placing trees and rocks using the Foliage tool
Streaming levels
5
Lights, Camera, Action – Cinematics
Lights, Camera, Action – Cinematics
Introduction
An introduction to Matinee
Creating an opening cutscene
Playing a Matinee via Blueprints
Preventing a player from moving via cinematic mode
6
Lighting and Shadows
Lighting and Shadows
Introduction
Lighting overview – learning the types of lights
Adding moveable lights – flashlight, part 1
Creating a Day/Night cycle
7
Art Pipeline – Working with Materials
Art Pipeline – Working with Materials
Introduction
Creating a custom material
Creating a mirror material
Using Textures and normal maps with Materials
Creating glowing materials with static emissive lighting
Seeing through walls
8
Blueprint Scripting – Level Effects
Blueprint Scripting – Level Effects
Introduction
Building a flickering light
Converting from Level to Class Blueprints
Using Trigger Volumes – opening a door using Matinee
Adding to an existing Blueprint – flashlight, part 2
Creating a Health/Damage system, part 1 – taking damage
9
C++ Programming – Gameplay
C++ Programming – Gameplay
Introduction
Setting up your development environment
Displaying text during runtime
Networking 101 – creating collectables with networking
Saving or loading games and keyboard input with C++
Creating custom blueprint nodes
10
User Interface
User Interface
Introduction
Creating a Health/Damage system, part 2 – creating a healthbar
Dynamic enemy healthbars
Creating a main menu
Animating a menu
11
Publishing and Deployment
Publishing and Deployment
Introduction
Packaging your project
Creating an installer for Windows
Index
Index

Introduction

So far, we've been using blueprints in order to generate gameplay. This has been great and has worked well, but one of the main advantages that Unreal has over its competition, such as Unity and Cry Engine, is the fact that you can get access to the full source code of the engine and rework it to fit exactly what you're looking for.

It would be quite easy for me to write an entire book just about programming, and within these few pages, I can't possibly cover everything you need to know to write code. Rather, in this chapter, we are going to cover how to set up your development environment and some of the possibilities of programming in C++ for UE4.

Tip

If you are interested in taking this further and learning how to program C++ using UE4, read Learning C++ by Creating Games with UE4 by Packt Publishing.

When to use C++/Blueprints

One of the things that I often hear people asking is whether to use C++ or Blueprints within their projects, or which one is better. As it currently stands...

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